Checking Out the Libraries

Devotees of children's book art will find rich deposits of original illustrations, manuscripts and first editions in numerous collections scattered around the country. Though hardly a definitive roundup, here is a look at some of the noteworthy collections. Our thanks to Leonard S. Marcus, author and children's book historian, for his help in compiling this information.

TheCotsen Children's Library at Princeton University numbers among its collection 23,000 illustrated books and related items, published in more than 40 languages, including a 1697 edition of Perrault's fairy tales, the original manuscript for Edward Lear's Nonsense Poems and 17th-century hornbooks. The library features an interactive exhibit for children and sponsors various programs, including readings and dramatic performances.

Part of the University of Minnesota's Children's Literature Research Collections, theKerlan Collection contains 75,000 children's books, primarily by 20th-century American writers, plus manuscripts and illustration materials for 9,000 titles. Jean Fritz, Don Freeman and Trina Schart Hyman are among those who have donated their papers to the collection.

H.A. and Margret Rey, Ezra Jack Keats, Kate Greenaway and Randolph Caldecott are some of the children's book luminaries represented in thede Grummond Children's Literature Collection in the McCain Library and Archives at the University of Southern Mississippi. More than 1,200 authors and illustrators have donated original manuscripts and art to the collection, which also includes 65,000 published books dating from 1530 to the present.

Educational programming and the creation of traveling exhibits are core missions of theMazza Collection at Ohio's University of Findlay, where five galleries house 2,000 original works of art.

TheRutgers Collection of Original Illustrations for Children's Literature at the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University features some 4,000 objects, representing original art and preparatory work by more than 100 American artists, including Roger Duvoisin. A gallery devoted exclusively to the collection features three exhibits a year.

Also notable: TheOsborne Collection of Early Children's Books at the Toronto Public Library; theBaldwin Library of Historical Children's Literature at the University of Florida at Gainesville; theLouise Seaman Bechtel Collection at Vassar College; theChildren's Book Collections at the Lilly Library at Indiana University; theNortheast Children's Literature Collection at the University of Connecticut at Storrs; theMay Massee Collection at Emporia State University in Kansas; the collection of rare children's books found at the Morgan Library in New York City; Hollins University's collection of the papers of Margaret Wise Brown; Yale University's collection of the papers and library of publisher William R. Scott; and the many children's books and original art held by the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, also at Yale.